Officials Say Scoring Errors for SAT Were Understated

A day after the College Board notified colleges that it had misreported the scores of 4,000 students who took the SAT exam in October, an official of the testing organization disclosed that some of the errors were far larger than initially suggested.

With college counselors and admissions officials scrambling to take a second look at student scores in the final weeks before they mail out acceptances and rejections, Chiara Coletti, the College Board's vice president for public affairs, said that 16 students out of the 495,000 who took the October exam had scores that should have been more than 200 points higher.

"There were no changes at all that were more than 400 points," Ms. Coletti said. She did not say how many students had errors that big. The three-section test has a maximum score of 2400.

At the height of admissions season, colleges reported Tuesday being notified by the College Board that nearly 1 percent of the students who took the SAT reasoning test in October, or about 4,000, had received erroneous scores. On Tuesday, Ms. Coletti characterized the largest errors as in the 80- to 100-point range.

College counselors and college admissions officers said yesterday that they were surprised by the announcement and its timing, which came months after the College Board began investigating and close to the end of the admissions process.

"To have it come this late is really challenging," said Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. "We've been through half the admitted class already, and now we have to stop everything and review those students who were affected."

The board said yesterday that it had finished notifying high schools and students about discrepancies. It said it would return the fees the affected students had paid to take the exam and to send the results to colleges and scholarship organizations.

A clearer picture emerged of who was affected. Ms. Coletti said the biggest concentration of errors was on the East and West Coasts, with the largest numbers of students in New York and New Jersey. Almost all of the mistakes understated the true scores students had earned.

She said 83 percent of the scoring errors were 10 to 40 points. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, learned that scores for 103 of its 20,450 applicants were being raised, including 23 students who had applied to be admitted in its early decision program. Fourteen of those applicants had been denied.

Mr. Stetson said it appeared that most of the changes would not alter the admissions decisions, but that his department would review each of the applications again.

Bruce Poch, vice president and dean of admissions at Pomona College in California, questioned how many students nationally whose early decision applications were rejected might have been accepted had their scores been reported correctly.

He also questioned how many students had altered the lists of colleges they were applying to because their scores had been reported as lower than they really were.

"I hardly think a refund of the test fee will make up for that pain," Mr. Poch said, "and in this litigation-driven society, I wonder how long it will take for a class-action suit to emerge."

He said he sent messages yesterday to the six Pomona applicants whose scores were changed-- students from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. -- telling them he understood that the applications period was "a very tense moment" and assuring them that their new scores were being taken into account.

The College Board's scoring problems also spilled into sports. Eric Christianson, a spokesman for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, said the College Board had notified it that 59 students whose scores were being changed had requested that their scores be sent to the association.

Mr. Christianson said the association was trying to determine how many of them had actually registered with the N.C.A.A. clearinghouse, which handles eligibility rules for student athletes. He added that final certification of N.C.A.A. eligibility was not completed until after graduation. A number of colleges said they were reviewing all of the applicants whose scores were being raised, but did not expect to change many decisions.

Harvard said that about four dozen of its nearly 23,000 applicants were subject to the scoring mistakes, and that "in no case will any student be disadvantaged by the College Board's errors in scoring."

It said that standardized test scores were only one element among many considered by the admissions committee, and that "even differences of 100 points or more, do not determine admissions decisions."

New York University, which had 35,073 applications this year, said that it had been notified of changes for about 300 students, but that not all of them had actually applied. Students can designate colleges to receive their test scores when they take the SAT, but sometimes change their minds about where to apply later.

Josh E. Taylor, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said that the university planned to take the new scores into account but that it "does not place a huge amount of importance on the SAT's."

Some college counselors said that students they advised were very upset by the problems.

"Scores are absurdly important," said Ned Johnson, a consultant in the Washington area who works with students applying to college. He added, "One hundred points could easily make or break a kid."

Mr. Johnson said "the initial reaction was utter stupefaction, disbelief, anger." The College Board said Tuesday that it received the first indication that there might be problems after two students asked that it re-examine their scores in late December.

The board said it still did not know the exact cause of the problems, but that they involved the scanning of sheets of test answers at a site in Texas so they could be scored by machine.

Correction: March 14, 2006, Tuesday An article on Thursday about errors in the scoring of the College Board's SAT exams misspelled the given name of a spokesman for the National Collegiate Athletic Association who commented on the effect on student athletes. He is Erik Christianson, not Eric.